


In and Out of Being

by Isagel



Category: White Collar
Genre: Bondage, Dominance, Episode Related, M/M, Masturbation, Ownership, Season/Series 01, Sexual Fantasy, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:51:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4457276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s always loved not existing, letting one life flicker out only for another to begin, an endless series of new identities sliding smoothly through his fingers like beads on a string, all of them true, none of them real. He’s always loved that perfect freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In and Out of Being

**Author's Note:**

> Written in season 1, but not previously posted to the AO3. 
> 
> Set during episode 1x06, "All In".

He sees her lift the tumbler, her arm going up, then down, almost in slow motion, and his heart expands, dilates, grinds against his ribcage. He doesn’t even know what he’s afraid of, until the blow hits with a shattering of glass, a crushing of a hundred minuscule parts, and all the air leaves his body, so suddenly that he can feel the empty space open wide in his chest. 

Mei Lin offers him Kate, then, while the watch lies broken on the sink, nothing but a faux gold cadaver now without the pulse beat of the tracker lodged inside. And he needs Kate, needs her safe. It’s easy to turn his back on the glimmer of metal, and smile, and make a deal.

They spend the night in that hotel room, for pretence’s sake; quiet, with the light’s on, sitting each in their own armchair. He doesn’t even take his jacket off, his body cradled in vintage Devore. But he’s aware - every minute that the hands on the watch he’s not wearing do not turn - aware of the naked places, at his wrist, at his ankle, conscious of the weight missing, the tightness that isn’t there. He sits very still, watching Mei Lin as she watches him, cautious and assessing while feigning perfect ease. He can’t shake the panic, though, rattling inside him in the unknown void that doesn’t close. Can’t shake the sense of loss.

* * *

“You’re weird,” the little girl declares, and rushes off, whirlwind speed of a child like nothing can hold her. Neal takes her chair, sitting down next to Peter. The laptop screen on the table shows a grid of streets laid out in grey and graphite blue. There’s no red dot blinking Neal’s location out in a steady rhythm. The map is as silent as if he didn’t exist.

He’s always loved not existing, letting one life flicker out only for another to begin, an endless series of new identities sliding smoothly through his fingers like beads on a string, all of them true, none of them real. He’s always loved that perfect freedom.

“What happened to the watch?” Peter asks, and it’s strange, how hard it is to lie.

He’s almost certain Peter doesn’t buy his story, even when he pushes to sell it with an earnest shoulder-slap, a bit of casual physical contact to reassure on the most primal level. It unsettles him, not having Peter’s confidence. But then the other agents are there, and Peter says, without inflection or hesitation, “Jones, if you’ll do the honors,” and it turns out the truly unsettling thing is how the nervous tension in the muscles of Neal’s neck drains instantly away, as if Peter could have withheld the anklet, as if that would have been some kind of punishment. 

A minute later, when Jones straightens and Neal takes his foot down off the chair, the weight of the plastic is solid, real, against the bump of bone at his ankle. It settles against his body like the breath inside his chest.

* * *

In the room he rents in June's house, he goes to bed every night with the blinds open, watching the skyline glitter bright outside his window, no bars or concrete walls to keep him from embracing it. He keeps his eyes open for as long as he can, and most times, it's as though he drifts away to sleep without ever taking his gaze off the city.

This night, though, the faint moon above the towers of New York doesn't help him sleep. He closes his eyes, and shifts under his covers. Egyptian cotton moves soft and soundless against his bare skin, drags with a sigh against plastic. Without thinking, he pulls his knee up towards his chest, slides his hand down beneath the sheet to trace his fingers over the anklet. 

It's clunky, not any more appealing to touch than it is to sight. The strip of plastic is cool on the outside, warm where the edges meet his flesh. There is enough room for him to push his fingertips beneath it, for his thumb to follow the curve of the shallow indent it's made where it's pressed into skin. Jones always makes it looser than Cruz, his touch clinically kind like a doctor's, where hers is sharp and just short of brutal. 

He wonders what Peter's approach would be like, if he ever decided to do the honors himself. If it would be any less of a chore to him, his hands any gentler. If he would linger there, bent over Neal’s ankle.

The thought makes his body harden, his cock rise in the narrow space between his raised thigh and the mattress. 

He can imagine it exactly, the awkwardness on Peter's face belied by the absolute steadiness of his hands, the way he'd take his time, fitting the anklet just so. Tugging at it, probably, making sure it was good and tight, even though the click of the plastic strip slipping into place would already have told him it was secure. Thorough to a fault. He wouldn't look Neal in the eye, not during, but afterwards he would hold his gaze, and that look would be steady, too - Neal's never met anyone more steady than Peter - and maybe his hand would still rest on the anklet, on Neal's leg, and he wouldn't move, not until he saw what he wanted to see in Neal's eyes. Until he could feel Neal accept the fact of being trapped.

His breath hitches, exhalation wet against the pillow, and he turns a little further, almost onto his stomach, the head of his cock rubbing against the mattress. He wonders if Peter is watching, seeing his red dot blink in place on his computer screen, checking on him, if he ever thinks about what Neal might be doing, when the tracker says he's still and stationary, exactly where he should be.

But Peter is at home, of course, in bed with Elizabeth, and, yeah, that thought does nothing to make his hips grind slower against the sheets. Her warm curves nestled in the long angles of Peter’s body, sighing, smiling when she shifts against him. Peter’s arm tightening around her.

Elizabeth who said “My husband wants to trust you.” 

Peter who said “I feel responsible.”

His fingers clutch tight around the anklet, plastic pressing skin into bone, and his free hand reaches down between his legs. When he comes, his eyes fly open; the sky is an endless sapphire blue above the city lights.

* * *

“And you’re ready for this?” Mei Lin asks.

He clasps his hands behind his back, fingers wrapping around his wrist, around the new watch Peter gave him to put on. The one he promised not to break.

The stop watch button is a clear circle of metal beneath the pad of his thumb. He presses it down, and ceases to exist.

“Ready,” he says.

The elevator closes its doors.

Upstairs, on the glassed-in roof, there is another skyline. Not as exquisitely dramatic as the one he sees from June’s house, but all around them, in every direction, spreading jagged beneath a white-pale sky. He feels it as a movement at the edge of his vision while he makes the deal with Lau, as a tingling at the back of his neck when Mei Lin slips him his reward. There are FBI agents at every exit down below, but he can think of a hundred different ways to get past them, a hundred different pathways out of here. To Kate.

All he has to do is stay invisible.

When he takes his watch off and pushes the button a second time, he can see, behind his eyelids, his red dot flare into being on Peter’s screen. He knows what the look will be on Peter’s face, the smile that’s everywhere but on his lips, filled with satisfaction, and pride, and the confidence of ownership.

It makes it all too easy to be real.


End file.
